Chapter Text
The smell hit them first.
Detective Leon Kennedy had been on the force long enough to know that death had its own bouquet-something metallic and sweet that clung to the back of your throat like cheap perfume. But this? This was something else entirely. This was theatre.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Luis Serra muttered behind him, pressing a handkerchief that definitely wasn’t against his nose. The fabric was embroidered with pink roses. Leon didn't ask. “You see the eyes?”
Leon saw the eyes.
The girl couldn't have been more than nineteen. She sat propped against the alley wall like a discarded doll, legs arranged in a parody of modesty, hands folded neatly in her lap. Her throat had been opened with surgical precision just one clean cut from ear to ear that turned her collar into a crimson bib. But it was the eyes that Luis meant. They’d been removed. Not gouged, not torn. Extracted. Two perfect, empty sockets stared out at the rain slicked bricks of the warehouse district, and in each hollow, someone had placed a white chrysanthemum.
“Third one this month,” Leon said, his voice flat. He crouched down, ignoring the way his trench coat pooled in the filthy water running through the gutter. The girl's hair was blonde, cut in a particular college girl style that all the girls were wearing, short at the back, longer in the front, held back from her face with a red barrette shaped like a butterfly. “Same flower. Same pose. Same.. Presentation.”
“The press is going to eat this alive.” Luis stepped back, giving the crime scene photographers room to work. Their flashes turned the alley into a nightmare, catching the girl's pale skin in the burst of harsh white light. “Mayor’s already breathing down the captain's neck. Three girls, Sancho. Three and we don't have shit.”
Leon didn't answer. He was looking at the girl's hands. They were manicured, the nails painted a soft pink, but there was dirt under them. She'd fought. She had scratched at something….someone. He pulled a pen from his coat pocket and gently lifted her right hand, turning it to catch the light.
Underneath the nails it wasn't skin, nor blood.
Something fibrous.
Yellow.
“Get the techs to bag her hands,” he said. “And tell them to check the area. If she fought, she might have torn something off him. A button, fabric, hair-”
“Detective?”
The voice came from the mouth of the alley, curious and eager and entirely too cheerful for the circumstances. Leon turned, already feeling the headache building behind his eyes.
She was young. Twenty-two, maybe twenty-three, wearing a fresh tan corduroy blazer and carrying a notepad that looked like it had been chewed. Her hair was the color of honey combs, all gold and copper, it fell around her shoulders in a way that suggested she didn't care to use a brush today. She looked too fresh; new. It was obvious she was a rookie. Despite it, she was already writing something down, pencil scratching furiously against paper.
“This is a restricted area,” Leon said, standing. He was tall; Five-eleven, broad-shouldered, the kind of build that filled out a rumpled suit and made it look good. His hair was dirty blonde, falling across his forehead in a way that might have been boyish if not for the shadows under his eyes. He hadn't slept in thirty-six hours. “Press conference is at noon.”
“I’m not press,” she said, though the notepad suggested otherwise. “Not officially. I'm Ashley Graham. I’m a freelancer for The Planet Bugle, and this-” she gestured around the room,“-this is my story. I've been following the Chrysanthemum Killer for several months! I can be of help.”
Luis laughed, a short, braking sound. “Following? Señorita, the only folks following this case are rotting in that coroner's van. You want a story? Then write about the weather, porque aquí no hay nada más que chisme muerto.”
Ashley frowned at Luis’s attitude, clearly offended by his dismissal. But she refused to listen, stepping past him only to see the woman’s body and let out a gasp. She covered her mouth and looked away, faltering in her steps.
“See what I meant, cariño?” Luis pushed further but Leon shot him a glare at the egging.
“Never seen a body in real life before, huh?” Leon took note of Ashley’s once rosy cheeks that had drained of all color. She grimaced, face scrunching as she felt worse at her naivety.
Despite her obvious discomfort, she turned to face the body again. Her green eyes hesitantly gazed over the woman’s body, hand still over her mouth but they zoned in on a particular feature.
“She’s different…” Ashley spoke, her voice muffled by her hand which slowly fell from her face.
Leon felt something cold move through his chest. “What?”
“The others. The first two, They were brunettes, right? Dark hair, dark eyes. College students. This girl-” Ashely lifted her notepad to scribble something down. Her eyes, green and full of determination now, lifted to meet Leon’s. “She’s blonde. Blue eyes, I'd guess, if she still had them. She's not his type.”
The alley went quiet. Even the photographers’ distant murmurs from behind the police lines had drowned out.
“How,” Leon spoke slowly and with caution, “do you know about the other victims’ hair color? That information hasn't been officially released.”
Ashley smirked, attempting to feign confidence. It didn't reach her eyes. “I told you, detective. I've been following this story for a while. I’m pretty good at my job.”
She reached into her pocket and withdrew a folded piece of paper. Leon took it, aware Luis moving closer to read over his shoulder. It was a photocopy of a photographer, a yearbook picture– maybe, or a drivers’ license? A girl with dark hair and a serious expression stared out at them.
“Deid Col’Girll,” Ashley stated firmly, despite a momentary waver before she found her groove. “Twenty years old. University of Phi Sigma Delta sophomore. Found in a drainage ditch off Route 7, two months ago. The police ruled it a drug overdose.”
“It was an overdose,” Luis insisted, but his voice had lost some conviction.
“Then why,” Ashley argued, “did someone replace her eyes with flowers before they called it in?”
Leon looked down at the paper, then back at the dead girl with a red barrette. The rain was starting to fall harder now, hitting against the dumpster and turning the blood in the gutter into pink swirls. Somewhere in the distance, a siren wailed.
“You need to leave,” Leon spoke sharply.
“What? But I can help you! We can catch this guy!”
“You can get yourself killed. This isn't a game, Miss Graham. This isn't a story you can write from your fancy desk with a cup of joe. This-” he gestured at the body, at the flower, at the whole broken world “-this is real. And the man who did this? They don't care about your author attribution. They’ll target you.”
Ashley didn't flinch, squaring her shoulders as she stood straight in front of him. “I’m not leaving.”
“I can have you arrested for interfering with a police investigation.”
“You could,” Ashley commended but gave a tiny, confident smirk. “But then you would miss out on some leads that I found,” She reached into her pocket again and withdrew a second piece of paper. This one was a photograph, grainy but blown up from something smaller. It showed a street scene-neon lights, wet pavement, wet pavement, the entrance to a building with a flickering sign that reads “THE PINK FLAMINGO” in looping pink script.
“It’s a club,” Ashley explained. “Downtown. Upscale, very exclusive, very expensive. The kind of place where politicians go to forget they're married.” She pointed to a figure in the corner of the photograph, blurred and partially obscured by shadows. A woman in a red dress, her face turned away from the camera, her hands raised as if signaling someone. Deid Col’Girll.
“This was taken three days before she died and that’s-” She pointed to another figure. A man dressed in a dark coat, his face hidden by the brim of his fedora. He was holding something in his hand. Something that caught the neon light and glinted. “-her date,” Ashley finished. “I believe your killer likes to shop for his victims, Detective. And I think he shops at the Pink Flamingo.”
Leon snatched the photograph, causing Ashley to let out a small protest but he ignored her. His hands were steady, but he had an uneasy feeling. He squinted at the woman in the red dress, the way her body language suggested she was trying to pull away, at the man’s hand on her elbow.
“Where did you get this?”
“I have my sources.”
“Your sources are going to get you murdered,” Leon bit, icy eyes meeting her bright green ones.
“Maybe.” Ashley shrugged, a small smile playing at her lips upon seeing his irritation, but Leon could catch a tiny glimpse of nervousness. “But isn't that what good journalism is about? Taking risks to uncover the truth?”
Luis stepped forward with his hands moving to cuffs. “Alright, señorita. You're coming downtown–no funny business.”
“No,” Leon held up his hand. He was still looking at the photograph, at the glint in the man's hand. It wasn't a knife. It was too small for that. A key, maybe. Or a ring. Or…
He glanced up at Ashley, at her blond hair and her green eyes, and the excited look all over her face as if she were an eager puppy. How could she still be invested even as she stood in the mouth of an alley with a dead girl only a few feet away?
“You want to help?”
“Leon-” Luis started, clearly going to disapprove of whatever Leon said next. It wasn’t like Luis to be the cautious one, but sometimes he had to take the responsible role.
“You can help… but you do what I say when I say. You don't go anywhere alone. You don’t talk to anyone without me present. And the moment-” he held a finger directly in front of her face “-the moment you think you're in over your head, you walk away. No story is worth your life.”
Ashley's eyes widened, before she jerked her head up and down in a quick nod. “Does this mean I'm on the case?”
“It means,” Leon shook his head, turning back to the body, “that you're a witness. And witnesses get to go to protection. Luis, get her statement. Everything she knows about Deid Col’Girll, about the Pink Flamingo… about her ‘sources.’ And then-” he crouched again, looking at the dead girls flowered filled sockets “-then were going to pay a visit to this club. Tonight.”
“Tonight?” Luis groaned. “Come on, Sancho, it's already practically dark. How am I supposed to get this all taken care of that fast? I have a hot date–”
“Your date can wait.” Leon reached into his pocket and withdrew a pair of latex gloves, snapping them on. “Our killer just changed his pattern. Blonde instead of brunette. A public alley instead of a secluded ditch... He's escalating. He's getting confident,” Leon looked up at the sky, at the rain falling in the streets, at the city beyond. A place that swallowed girls whole and never bothered to remember their names. “And confident killers make mistakes.”
He didn't see Ashley slip her notepad back into her pocket. He didn't see the way her hand trembled, just once before she stilled it; didn't see the way she looked at the dead girl's hair. Blonde, like hers. The color drained from Ashley’s face.
She knew something. Something she wasn't saying.
But Leon would find out. Eventually. He always finds out.
The coroner arrived with his black bag and his clinical detachment, and the alley became a machine of efficiency—photographs, measurements, the gentle zipping of a body bag. Leon watched them load the girl with the red barrette into the van, watched the doors close, watched the taillights disappear into the rain.
Three girls. Three sets of flowers. Three messages he couldn't read.
“Detective?” Ashley was at his elbow, her voice soft now, stripped of its former confidence. “The Club. There's someone you should talk to.”
“What?” Leon looked down at Ashley, whose eyes didn’t meet his own and instead kept their gaze downward.
“Her name is Ada. Ada Wong. She works the bar, but she's... more than that. She sees things. Knows things." Ashley hesitated, biting her lip. "She called me last week. Said she had information about the killer. But she wouldn't talk over the phone. She said it wasn't safe..."
Leon squinted his eyes as he observed Ashley. The rain drenched her hair to her face, turning a dark copper color, making her look like a drowning person. “Why you? Why call a journalist instead of the police?”
Ashley met his eyes. In the neon glow of the distant streetlights, her face was all shadows and secrets. The vibrant colors did nothing for her dead complexion, making her appear almost as if she were a ghost.
"Because," she trembled, "She knows I'm next."